Principles? What are those?

Thursday

May 16, 2013 at 4:32 PM

An ill-advised war halfway across the world moves along with no clear signs of progress despite years of fighting, billions spent and thousands of lives lost.

An ill-advised war halfway across the world moves along with no clear signs of progress despite years of fighting, billions spent and thousands of lives lost.The IRS is directing an assault on the White House’s enemies list.The Justice Department is spying on the Fourth Estate, going through all sorts of information about The Associated Press and its reporters and editors.Short-sighted cover-ups and lies have taken the place of diplomacy and foreign policy.No, this isn’t a history lesson about Mr. Nixon’s Washington. It is a present-day drama playing out in front of the world.We can only wonder at the howling outrage that would be droning out of places like The New York Times editorial page if the White House were in a Republican’s hands.We can only wonder because there is little more than whining coming out now, and even that seems more perfunctory than righteously indignant.You can’t really blame them.After all, national politicians and their “watchdogs” have spent so long honing the art of ruthless partisanship that it would be unrealistic to expect intellectual honesty or logical consistency from either side.That is how international travesties like what happened in Benghazi take place without daily, breathless coverage of “who knew what and when,” the kind of coverage that surely would have taken place if a similar episode had unfolded under either of the Bushes’ watch.It is also, sadly, how things like this happen without widespread anger at these clear abuses of government power.People on both sides of the political aisle have been so conditioned by their own partisan obedience to find fault only with the other side, their complacency takes hold in situations that call for anger from any principled American.So we see some right-leaning folks scolding this administration and its backers for continuing the mockery of freedom that is the Guantanamo political prison.We see these same folks slamming Obama, et al. for an increased use of drones to target and destroy people who end up on the government’s hit list.It will be interesting to see if they are just as worked up about it when the next Republican president uses the same methods, as he or she certainly will.For now, though, we can just listen to the deafening silence coming from the left to see how truly spineless Washington and its partisan adherents have become.How can anyone — left, right or center — not be angered as an American at the recent shenanigans in the White House? When added to the wrongs this administration has committed in carrying out, hiding and ultimately ignoring its part in arming Mexican drug cartels, the recent stories paint an unsavory picture of our chief executive, a picture only a mother or, in this instance, his blindly partisan backers, could love.Either that, or it paints a picture of a man at the helm of a hopelessly corrupt administration who is powerless to oversee it and unwilling to correct its ugly faults.Either way you cut it, recent revelations about the White House’s corruption or ineptitude should give everyone pause, no matter which party tends to get your vote or monetary contribution.Is it really important which party is snooping on reporters and sicking the IRS on political opponents? Does it matter whether the person who is directing a coverup of the deadly ineptitude on display in Benghazi has a D or an R after his name?Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, you ought to be able to set aside petty partisanship long enough be embarrassed that a nation with a supposed love of liberty would do these things to its own citizens.The tea party crowd is a paranoid bunch, but as the Nixon-era saying goes — and as the IRS has now proven — even paranoids can have enemies.What the folks on the left might want to remember is that just because you voted for someone doesn’t mean that person remains true to the ideals you hold dear.

Editorial Page Editor Michael Gorman can be reached at 448-7612 or by e-mail at mike.gorman@dailycomet.com.

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